Shot to pieces – pictures blow large holes in Sgrena claims.

Further to Scott’s comprehensive post below about the Giuliana Sgrena checkpoint shooting (that resulted in the unfortunate death of Italian agent Nicola Calipari), Little Green Footballs has pictures of the car allegedly involved. LGF also links to better copies of the photos here and here too. As you can see, the car doesn’t look like it has been hit with the 300-400 rounds alleged by Sgrena’s editor on BBC News Online.

Pictures of the same car have been shown on BBC News 24 – as part of their daily broadcast of ABC News Tonight with Peter Jennings between 1.30am-2am. It remains to be seen whether the BBC will cover this development under their own banner, either on TV or on BBC News Online.

B-BBC commenters also highlight this link to an interesting (translated) article in the prominent Italian newspaper Corriere Della Serra.

Update: The pictures are also here in Corriere Della Sera and on RAI TG1 news (Realvideo 300Kbps, about 3’20” in), which shows an animated graphic depicting the car being shot at from the right hand side (i.e. the side not shown in the pictures), with Calipari in the rear right seat, next to Sgrena in the rear left seat, with the driver in the front left seat.

Update 2 (9pm): BBC News Online continues to cover the Sgrena shooting story, posting both Italy disputes US hostage account and, as noted by Susan, Transcript: Giuliana Sgrena interview, in which Sgrena quite clearly says “the tanks started to strike against us” and “our car was destroyed”. Strangely, BBC News Online haven’t illustrated the destruction of Sgrena’s car, even though photographs (see links above) have been available since yesterday. I wonder why.

Asked about whether she knew if there was payment of ransom money (see: Italy criticised over alleged ransom to free hostage in today’s Times), Sgrena replies “No, I don’t know”. Oddly, the obvious follow-up, “What do you think about the payment of ransoms to kidnappers?”, goes unasked by our fearless BBC inquisitor in the quest for truth.